Under the cover of night
by 100Percent Shipper
Summary: She would come to him, like a mirage, under the cover of night. Ficlette set after they break up and before the XF is reopened. MSR all the way!


Inspired to write my first MSR ficlette after Founder's Mutation. This is pretty much how I imagined their relationship before they got back on the X-files again.

She would come, like a mirage, under the cover of night. The muted knock of her knuckles on the door would reverberate through the frame of the house as if it recognized who she was and was trying to absorb her frequency into its walls. Mulder would hear her approach like a sixth-sense and he'd rise from his desk covered in newspaper clippings, print outs, dusty notes written in indecipherable scribbles. He'd walk to the door past his overflowing wastepaper basket, past walls papered with the articles of UFO sightings and their fuzzy photos, crop circles, past a picture of an eight year old girl with pigtails now curling and yellowed around the edges. Next to it, the picture of a red-head smiling sadly at the camera with a chubby baby in her arms.

In the living room there was a leather couch that reminded Mulder of one he once owned in an apartment in Washington D.C. He'd worn a similar groove into the cushions of this one over the last few years. He'd bought it when she'd left as a sort of exclamation of his newly re-found bachelor status.

At the front door he would hesitate because he knew why she came. He would hesitate at the door not because he was unsure if he'd open the door but because he wanted to take a moment to be fully present. Her at his door was rare enough that he wanted to remember her like it was their first time.

"Mulder." She would say and scan him as if to categorize all the things that had changed and all the things that had stayed the same. Sometimes she said nothing more than this, other times she'd ask him a string of questions; when was the last time he'd eaten, when was the last time he'd showered, had he been out of the house? More often than not she had a Tupperware in hand with one of his favourite meals. She wasn't the greatest of cooks but Mulder wasn't fussy and he liked that the food had been made by her for him.

If he ate, she'd sit at the kitchen table and watch him. Silence had always been easy between them and it still was. He liked having her in the house again and though he never said it, he often thought it would be nice if she came back. He never said it because he knew it would only cause a ghost to pass behind her eyes, eyes that had seen too much and it would remind him of how much she'd already suffered. It made him sad so instead he'd ask her how she was.

"I'm fine." Was her standard response but he'd long ago learned to read the nuances of those words. Sometimes she'd elaborate and tell him about a case at the hospital. Sometimes she'd talk about her mother or her brothers and their children. Mostly she didn't. This wasn't why she was here.

The plate in the sink with the other unwashed dishes, Scully's fingers might twitch but she would step away and turn to him. The preliminaries were over now and what came next could go in a multitude of directions that forked off each other down the lines of probability. It all depended on her mood.

She might slip onto his lap right there and claim his lips hungrily with all the passion her lithe frame keep pressurized inside or she might turn and walk out of the room, without looking to see if he followed because he always did. If they went to the bathroom she would undress him, folding his clothes neatly next to the sink and then let him undress her. She would wash him in the shower, sliding her soapy hands over his muscles with a sort of reverence. He often got handsy here, her pale skin slick with water droplets too much to resist. If she let him, he knew that he could loom over her and her eyes would dilate and her breath would shorten as she looked up at him, at the mercy of his whim. If she removed his hands, he knew to wait.

He liked it best when they made it to the bedroom because this is where she was the softest, the warmest. Here it was not about sex. A feeling would flow out of her, transforming her into something that he only saw in her most open and vulnerable moments and to hold her in his arms made him feel powerful in a way he couldn't describe. She would be pliant. Affectionate. She would look into his eyes, pepper his face, his neck with kisses, playing with the hairs at the base of his neck, drawing him into her in her beguiling way and he knew they could never truly be over.

She might whisper in his ear the way she knew he liked or she might be silent – she was a chameleon based on the direction of the wind that blew her to his door. Slow, fast, forceful or soft - it was a dance they danced to remind each other that no matter where they went or what they did they were still each other's touchstone. Their center of gravity was still that mid-point between them. Sometimes Mulder felt Scully's frustration at this as she pulled at the bonds that held them, like she wanted to break free. On those days she was a little desperate and she dug her nails in his skin leaving crescent shaped marks.

Afterwards she might stay. Rarely would she still be there in the morning - perhaps it reminded her of a time now past. Mulder felt bereft at the cold side of the bed that would always belong to her. He wished he could purge this obsession with finding answers so elusive that she, along with the rest of the world, had slipped through his fingers as he'd tried to grasp the thread of truth to unravel it all. But as the smell of her faded, he would return to his study thick with the government conspiracy and alien abduction. He'd walk past the articles of UFO's with their fuzzy photos, the eight year old girl and the sad smile of the red-head woman with the baby in her arms. He'd sit at his desk and sift through clues, in search something to believe.


End file.
